Holy Shroud of Besançon: Engraving on cut paper of this now-lost relic.
[Convent art] / [Holy Shroud of Besançon]. [Holy Shroud of Besançon engraving applied to cut paper]. S.l. [Besançon or environs]: s.n., s.a. [17th or 18th century]. [36.2 x 23.1 cm exterior of frame], [1] f. sanguine engraving with applied hand-color in red and gold, affixed to [1] f. white cut paper which in turn is atop an orange background sheet. In early wood gilded frame, which is much rubbed, glazed, frame backing recent. Engraving and cut paper well preserved, colors still fresh.
Fine 17th- or 18th-century sanguine engraving of the Holy Shroud of Besançon (Saint-Suaire de Besançon). The engraving is applied to a sheet of white paper intricately cut in striking floral motifs, which is itself backed by an orange sheet of paper.
The Besançon winding cloth—on which was imprinted the ghostly image of Christ’s body—was first attested in 1523. No doubt related to the Shroud of Turin in origin and concept, it was destroyed in the Revolutionary fervor of 1794 and so never achieved the latter-day fame of the Turin relic.
The wounds of Christ here are colored by hand in red pigment, and the edges of the engraving are enhanced with gold. Note that the engraving leaves a blank ‘wound’ on Christ’s side, but that the colorist misunderstood the fact that the Shroud of Besançon is was itself a ‘life print’ in reverse: The colorist ignored the engraver’s cue and simply added a dab of red on the right side of Christ as if this were a conventional image of Christ and not an image of His bodily imprint.
This is a particularly spare treatment of the subject: The standard iconographical arrangement for representing the Shroud of Besançon shows the cloth being displayed by other figures (bishops & canons, Biblical figures who were at the empty tomb, or even angels). The skillfully cut paper was meant to imitate lacework, and this art, like lacework itself, was usually performed by women. Printing the engraving would, of course, have required the use of a specialized roller press, and so it was certainly sourced from a professional printmaker.
Reproductions of the Shroud of Besançon were not mere depictions but carried with them the thaumaturgical charge of the original (see Gauthier, Notes iconographiques). Fine devotional prints and embroideries of the Shroud varied in size and quality but typically were of a high register, being aimed at the more affluent pilgrim. Embroideries with similar sanguine engravings of the Holy Body are recorded as being given as royal gifts from the early 17th century, but also were produced in greater quantities ‘on spec’ by local nuns, particularly Annociades, Carmelites and Clarissans, “devoted to a purely contemplative life” (Gauthier, Notes iconographiques, pp. 17-19): “In the convents, religious women skilled in handling the needle framed in rich ornaments of gold & silk the image of the Holy Shroud drawn in bloody color and embroidered these famous panels which were reserved for offering to the most illustrious pilgrims” (“Dans les couvents de femmes religieuses, habile à manier l’aiguille, encadraient, dans de riches ornements d’or et de soie, des images du Saint-Suaire tirées en couleur sanguinolente et broaident ces fameuses écharpes qu’on réservait pour les offrir aux plus illustres pèlerins” (Gauthier, “Le Saint-Suaire de Besançon et ses pèlerins,” p. 175).
Mathis gives a concise history (worth quoting in full here) of The Shroud of Besançon: It “was a sheet that carries the mark of a naked body, seen face on. Believers took it to be the Holy Shroud—that is, the winding sheet that wrapped the body of Christ after his death on the cross. Relics of this kind appeared in several regions in France and Europe between the Middle Ages and the early modern epoch at Cadouin, Lierre, Compiège, and elsewhere. The most famous is the so-called Turin Shroud, to which the Besançon Shroud is surely related, since the former appeared in the Charny family, on the orders of Burgundy and Champagne, and was exhibited by the widow of Geoffroy de Charny, Jeanne de Vergy, a member of one of the main families of the Franch-Comté. The husband of their granddaughter, Humbert de Villersexel, kept the relic at Saint-Hyppolyte in the Doubs département from 1418 to 1452.
“The first known trace of the holy shroud of Besançon dates from 1523. It seems probable that it was a copy of the Turin Shroud, or at least that the idea of creating this artifact was related to the presence of the famous relic in this region. It was first kept in the cathedral of Saint-Etienne in Besançon; in 1669, it was transferred to the cathedral of Saint-Jean during the construction of the citadel of Vauban, which involved the destruction of the earlier place of worship. It was not much esteemed at first: in 1582, the canon Jean Garnier refused to move statues in the chapel of Saint Maimbeuf to make room for the reliquary that contained the shroud. But it gradually became an object of great veneration and, when presented to the faithful at Easter and Ascension Sunday, attracted crowds of more than thirty thousand. The altar of the holy shroud was privileged by Pope Gregory XIII in 1579.
“Like the Turin Shroud, the Besançon relic enjoyed popular veneration. It was particularly associated with cures for the eyes. Official appeals were made to it, including one for the protection against the plague in 1634 and when God was asked to ensure the victory of the forces of the Holy Roman Empire not only at Besançon but at Dole and Dijon. It was credited with many miraculous cures over the course of the seventeenth century … The Besançon Shroud no longer exists; it was torn up on 24 May 1794, and the cloth was used to bandage the wounded of the French revolutionary army” (Mathis, p. 227).
* Jules Gauthier, “Le Saint-Suaire de Besançon et ses pèlerins,” Mémoires de la Société d’Émulation du Doubs, ser. 7, vol. 7 (1903), pp. 164-84; Jules Gauthier, Notes iconographiques sur le Saint-Suaire de Besançon (1884); Remi Mathis, A Kingdom of Images: French Prints in the Age of Louis XIV, 1660-1715 (Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles, 2015).